Kind little, great man; a whole chestful of Orders had no power to chill the big warm heart that prompted your many deeds of generosity. It molders in a coffin now, and the decorations are dimming with dust in a glass-topped box. But beyond the Veil that parts the seen from the unseen world, I like to think that there were waiting for you rewards and honors, in comparison with which the most coveted earthly insignia were vilest dirt and dross.
XXXVI
Said the sutler-woman, whose coarse black hair was powdered white as any lady's of the early eighteenth century, smearing the dust from the peonies of her cheeks with a brawny arm that was dusty as any miller's:
"Young man, if thou stick to thy word, and take good care of the jackass, remembering the sharp nail-spike in the end of the whip-butt if he tries to kick or bite—I'll creep in under the tilt and take a forty-winks. Lord be thanked! my legs are sound, but they ache a bit!"
The jackass, who boasted the not inglorious name of "Rumschottel," laid back his ears viciously at his mistress's reference to the persuasive spike in the whip-butt, and the young man addressed by his temporary employer nodded in assent without opening his lips. For the dust in which the little tilt-cart moved was almost solid, being kicked up by the Seventh Corps of the Second Army of Germany, in line of march through the Haardt Wald by Kaiserslautern.
The sutler-woman's young man had marched with the Fifth Corps from Mayence by Oppenheim and Alzey, and had picked up an American tourist who knew of a short cut to Kaiserslautern, and had mislaid the Army Corps in trying to find it. Staffs, squadrons, batteries, battalions, transport and baggage had vanished like smoke among these vineyard-and-forest-clad hills, these pine-jacketed gorges, these roads that ran between natural ramparts of granite, or passed through quaint villages tucked under hillsides crimson and gold with laden appletrees, and dominated by ancient castles perched on towering platforms of rock.
Scenery palls when the thigh-bones seem wearing through their sockets; when the stomach complains for very emptiness, and there are bloody blisters inside the ragged socks. The American who had been so cocksure about the road to Kaiserslautern was lying up under a peasant's penthouse-thatch, at a twenty-mile distant village, drinking Kirsch, nursing his own skinless heels, and reading up "Murray." His late companion had refused to give in, and perseverance had won its reward. Sixty miles or so above Kreuznach, where the main road forks right and left, climbing the shoulders of the Nahe Valley, he had met the Ninth Corps of the Second Army marching up from Bingen, and hobbled at the heels of one of the dusty battalions until he could hobble no more.
The sutler-woman had come upon him sitting pumped-out by the wayside, had sold him bread, coffee and sausage, doctored his blisters, supplied him with tallowed strips of linen to replace his wornout socks, earned his gratitude, and displayed no reluctance to profit by her philanthropy, when he had volunteered to help lead the jackass as far as Kaiserslautern. True, he spoke a most vile jargon, but you cannot have everything. And the weather was so beautifully dusty, thought the sutler-woman, that an assistant would certainly be of use. Without the dust that clogs the human throat, the trade in liquid lubricants would be less roaring. And the tilt-cart contained, beside other marching-requisites, a twenty-gallon barrel of rather luke-warm beer.
The young man nodded again as the cart-shafts tilted in the hame-straps, and a command to throw his weight on the front-board was issued from behind. There was a good deal of creaking as he obeyed. A heavy weight suddenly added to the jackass's load made Rumschottel look malevolently round his near-side blinker, and display an upper row of long orange-colored teeth in testimony of his desire to bite. Then his driver slid off the board, took the rope reins, and continued to trudge beside him, keeping well to the low hedgerow so as to leave a clear space between the sutler's cart and the seemingly endless column of dusty infantrymen, striding steadily forward through a blazing August noon.